Poetry SchoolThe Mixed Borders project is now in its third year. With our partners at the London Parks and Gardens Trust, we placed thirty poets-in-residence in gardens all around London for Open Squares Weekend. As well as entertaining the public, our poets wrote a huge number of excellent poems, a selection of which we’re delighted to publish in Mixed Borders III, an online pamphlet.
The featured poets are:
Alesha Racine, Alex Josephy, Ali Lewis, Andrea Robinson, Ann Perrin, Axel Kacoutié, David Hale, Dorothy Yamamoto, Eleanor Vale, Frances White, Ginny Saunders, Hamizah Adzmi, Joanna Ingham, Julia Bird, Lewis Buxton, Lisa Kiew, Louise Adam, Mary Dickins, Nicola Jackson, Ryan Norman, Selina Rodrigues, Shirley Nicholson, Steph Morris, and Tolu Agbelusi.
The preface, below, is written by Julia Bird, the former Creative Director of the Poetry School, who developed the scheme.
For the third year in a row, the horticulturalists of London opened up their gardens to poets for Mixed Borders. Mixed Borders put dozens of poets in allotments, garden squares and other green spaces, to see what inspiration they would find among the flower beds and vegetable patches.
The result is this anthology, a bouquet of garden poems: poems in the voices of plants and wildlife, poems about garden visitors actual, historical and imaginary, poems by single voices, and poems by a multitude. Pick a favourite, and press it like a flower.
Thank you to all poets, garden managers and owners, the London Parks and Gardens Trust and Arts Council England who jointly contributed to the success of the residencies.
loveliness